by Mary Balogh
Lauren's smile was unmistakably radiant. It seemed strange to Neville as he led her eventually into the first set of country dances that he had ever hesitated about making her his bride, that he had kept her waiting for six years while he worked off the restless rebellion of youth as an officer with the Ninety-fifth Rifles. He had advised her not to wait, of course—he had been far too fond of her to keep her dangling when he had been quite uncertain of his intentions toward her. But she had waited. He was glad of it now, humbled by her patience and fidelity. There was a rightness about their impending marriage. And his affection for her had not dimmed. It had grown along with his admiration for her character and his appreciation of her beauty.
"And so it begins," he murmured to her as the orchestra began to play. "Our nuptials, Lauren. Are you happy?"
"Yes."
But even the single word was unnecessary. She glowed with happiness. She looked like the quintessential bride. She was his bride. It felt right.
Neville danced first with Lauren, then with his sister. Then he danced with a series of young ladies who looked as if they expected to be wallflowers while Lauren danced with a succession of different partners.
After taking a turn upon the balcony with one of his partners, Neville entered the ballroom through the French doors and joined a group of young gentlemen who, as always at balls, seemed to need one another's collective company in order to summon the courage to ask a young lady to dance. He had the misfortune to remark on the fact that none of them appeared to be dancing.
"Well, you have done the pretty every set, Nev," his cousin Ralph Milne, Viscount Sterne, said, "though only once with your betrothed. Hard luck, old chap, but I suppose you are not allowed to dance with her more than once, are you?"
"Alas, no," Neville agreed, gazing across the ballroom to where Lauren was standing with his mother, his paternal aunt, Lady Elizabeth Wyatt, and his maternal uncle and aunt, the Duke and Duchess of Anburey.
Sir Paul Longford, a childhood neighbor and friend, could not resist such a perfect opportunity for bawdiness. "Well, you know, Sterne," he said with his best drawl, "it is only for tonight, old chap. Nev is to dance alone with his bride all night tomorrow, though not necessarily on a dance floor. I have it on the best authority."
The whole group exploded with raucous male laughter, drawing considerable attention their way.
"A hit, Nev, you must confess," said his cousin and tomorrow's best man, the Marquess of Attingsborough.
Neville grinned after pursing his lips and handling the ribbon of his quizzing glass. "Let those words fall on any female ears, Paul," he said, "and I might feel obliged to call you out. Enjoy yourselves, gentlemen, but do not neglect the ladies, if you please."
He strolled off in the direction of his betrothed. She was wearing a high-waisted gown of blond net over daffodil-yellow sarcenet and looked as fresh and lovely as the springtime. It really was too bad that he was not to dance with her again for the rest of the evening. But then it would be strange indeed if he could not maneuver matters more to his liking.
It was not i mmediately possible. There was the necessity of conversing politely with Mr. Calvin Dorsey, a middle-aged, mild-mannered acquaintance of Lauren's grandfather, who had come to solicit Lauren's hand for the dance after supper and who stayed for a few minutes to make himself agreeable. And then the Duke of Portfrey arrived on Dorsey's heels to lead Elizabeth away for the next set. He was her longtime friend and beau. But finally Neville saw his chance.
"It is more like summer than spring outside," he remarked to no one in particular. "The rock garden must look quite enchanting in the lantern light." He smiled with deliberate wistfulness at Lauren.
"Mmm," she said. "And the fountain too."
"I suppose," he said, "you have reserved the next set with Lauren, Uncle Webster?"
"Indeed I have," the Duke of Anburey replied, but he winked at his nephew over Lauren's head. He had not missed his cue. "But all this talk of lanterns and summer evenings has given me a hankering to see the gardens with Sadie on my arm." He looked at his wife and waggled his eyebrows. "Now if someone could just be persuaded to take young Lauren off my hands…"
"If you were to twist my arm hard enough," Neville said, while his mother smiled in enjoyment of the conspiracy, "I might be persuaded to take on the task myself."
And so one minute later he was on his way downstairs, his betrothed on his arm. It was true that they were stopped at least half a dozen times by guests desiring to compliment them on the ball and wish them well during the coming day and the years ahead, but finally they were outside and descending the wide marble steps to feast their eyes on the rainbows created by lantern light on the spraying water of the fountain. They strolled onward toward the rock garden.
"You are a quite shameless maneuverer, Neville," Lauren told him.
"Are you glad of it?" He moved his head closer to hers.
She thought for a moment, her head tipped to one side, the telltale dimple denting her left cheek. "Yes," she said quite decisively. "Very."
"We are going to remember this night," he said, "as one of the happiest of our lives." He breathed in the freshness of the air with its faint tang of saltiness from the sea. He squinted his eyes so that the lights of individual lanterns in the rock garden ahead all blurred into one kaleidoscope of color.
"Oh, Neville," she said, her hand tightening on his arm. "Does anyone have a right to so much happiness?"
"Yes," he told her, his voice low against her ear. "You do."
"Just look at the garden," she said. "The lanterns make it seem like a fairyland."
He set himself to enjoying the unexpected half hour with her.
Chapter 2
Lily found the driveway beyond the massive gates to the park—a wide and winding road so darkened by huge trees that grew on either side and whose branches met overhead that only the occasional gleam of moonlight kept her from wandering off the path and becoming hopelessly lost. It was a driveway that seemed more like four miles long than two. Crickets chirped off to either side and a bird that might have been an owl hooted close by. Once there was the crackling of movement off in the forest to her right—some wild animal that she had disturbed, perhaps. But the sounds only succeeded in intensifying the pervading silence and darkness. Night had fallen with almost indecent haste.
And then finally she turned a bend and was startled by light in the near distance. She found herself staring at a brightly lighted mansion with another large building to one side of it also lighted up. There was light outside too—colored lanterns that must be hanging from tree branches.
Lily paused and gazed in amazement and awe. She had not expected anything of near this magnitude. The house appeared to be built of gray granite, but there was nothing heavy about its design. It was all pillars and pointed pediments and tall windows and perfect symmetry. She did not have the knowledge of architecture with which to recognize the Palladian design that had been superimposed upon the original medieval abbey with remarkably pleasing effect, but she felt the grandeur of the building and was overwhelmed by it. If she had imagined anything at all, it was a large cottage with a well-sized garden. But the name itself might have alerted her if she had ever really considered it. This was Newbury Abbey? Frankly it terrified her. And what was going on inside? Surely it did not look like this every night.
She would have turned back, but where would she go? She could only go forward. At least the lights—and the sounds of music that reached her ears as she drew closer—assured her that he must be at home.
Somehow she didn't find that a particularly comforting thought.
The great double doors at the front of Newbury Abbey stood open. There was light spilling out onto marble steps leading up to them, and the sounds of voices and laughter and music echoed behind them. There was the sound of voices outside too, though Lily saw only distant shadows in the darkness and no one noticed her approach.
She climbed the marble steps—she coun
ted eight of them—and stepped into a hall so brightly lighted and so vast that she felt suddenly dwarfed and quite robbed of breath and coherent thought. There were people everywhere, milling about in the hall, moving up and down the great staircases. They were all dressed in rich fabrics and sparkled with jewels and gems. Lily had foolishly expected to walk up to a closed door and knock on it, and he would answer it.
She wished suddenly that she had allowed Captain Harris to write his letter and had awaited a reply. What she had done instead no longer seemed a wise course at all.
Several liveried, white-wigged servants stood about on duty. One of them was hurrying toward her, she saw in some relief. She had been feeling invisible and conspicuous all at the same time.
"Out of here immediately!" he commanded, keeping his voice low, attempting to move her back toward the doors without actually pushing her. He was clearly trying not to draw attention to himself or to her. "If you have business here, I will direct you to the servants' entrance. But I doubt you do, especially at this time of night."
"I wish to speak with the Earl of Kilbourne," Lily said. She never thought of him by that name. She felt as if she were asking for a stranger.
"Oh, do you now?" The servant looked at her with withering scorn. "If you have come here to beg, be off with you before I summon a constable."
"I wish to speak with the Earl of Kilbourne," she said again, standing her ground.
The servant set his white-gloved hands on her shoulders, obviously intending to move her backward by force after all. But another man had glided into place beside him, a man dressed all in black and white, though he did not have the same sort of splendor as other gentlemen who were in the hall and on the stairs. He must be a servant too, Lily guessed, though superior to the first one.
"What is it, Jones?" he asked coldly. "Is she refusing to leave quietly?"
"I wish to speak to the Earl of Kilbourne," Lily told him.
"You may leave of your own volition now," the man in black told her with quiet emphasis, "or be taken up for vagrancy five minutes from now and thrown in jail. The choice is yours, woman. It makes no difference to me. Which is it to be?"
Lily opened her mouth again and drew breath. She had come at the wrong time, of course. Some grand sort of entertainment was in progress. He would not thank her for appearing now. Indeed, he might not thank her for coming at all. Now that she had seen all this, she began to understand the impossibility of it all. But what else could she do? Where else could she go? She closed her mouth.
"Well?" the superior servant asked.
"Trouble, Forbes?" another, far more cultured voice asked, and Lily turned her head to see an older gentleman with silver hair and a lady in purple satin with matching plumed turban on his arm. The lady had a ring on each finger, worn over her glove.
"Not at all, your grace," the servant called Forbes answered with a deferential bow. "She is just a beggar woman who has had the impudence to wander in here. She will be gone in a moment."
"Well, give her sixpence," the gentleman said, looking with a measure of kindness at Lily. "You will be able to buy bread for a couple of days with it, girl."
With a sinking heart Lily decided it was the wrong moment in which to stand her ground. She was so close to the end of her journey and yet seemingly as far away as ever. The servant in black was fishing in a pocket, probably for a sixpenny piece.
"Thank you," she said with quiet dignity, "but I did not come here for charity."
She turned even as the superior servant and the gentleman with the cultured voice spoke simultaneously and hurried from the hall, down the steps, along the terrace, and across a downward sloping lawn. She could not face that dark driveway again.
The light of the moon led her onward to a narrow path that sloped downward at a sharper angle through more trees though these did not completely hide the light. She would go down far enough, Lily decided, that she was out of sight of the house.
The path steepened still more and the trees thinned out until the pathway was flanked only by the dense and luxuriant growth of ferns. She could hear water now—the faint elemental surging of the sea and the rush of running water closer at hand. It was a waterfall, she guessed, and then she could see it gleaming in the moonlight away to her right—a steep ribbon of water falling almost sheer down a cliff face to the valley below and the stream that flowed toward the sea. And at the foot of the waterfall, what appeared to be a small cottage.
Lily did not turn up the valley toward it. There was no light inside and she would not have approached it even if there had been. To her left she could see a wide, sandy beach and the moonlight in a sparkling band across the sea.
She would spend the night just above the beach, she decided. And tomorrow she would return to Newbury Abbey.
***
When Lily awoke early the following morning, she washed her face and hands in the cold water of the stream and tidied herself as best she could before climbing the path back up over the fern-draped slope and through the trees to the bottom of the cultivated lawn.
She stood looking up at what appeared to be stables with the house beyond. Both looked even more massive and forbidding in the morning light than they had appeared last night. And there was a great deal of activity going on. There were numerous carriages on the driveway close to the stables, and grooms and coachmen bustled about everywhere. Last night's party guests must have stayed overnight and were preparing to leave, Lily guessed. It was clearly still not the right time to make her call. She must wait until later.
She was hungry, she discovered after she had returned to the beach, and decided to fill in some time by walking into the village, where perhaps she could buy a small loaf of bread. But when she arrived there, she found that it was by no means the quiet, deserted place it had been the evening before. The square was almost surrounded by grand carriages—perhaps some of the very ones she had seen earlier by the stables of the abbey. The green itself was crowded with people. The doors of the inn were wide open, and a great bustling in and out discouraged Lily from approaching. She could see that the gateway to the church was tightly packed with an even denser throng than the green held.
"What is happening?" she asked a couple of women who stood on the edge of the green close to the inn, both staring in the direction of the church, one of them on tiptoe.
They turned their heads to stare at her. One looked her up and down, recognized her as a stranger, and frowned. The other was more friendly.
"A wedding," she said. "Half the quality of England is here for the wedding of Miss Edgeworth to the Earl of Kilbourne. I don't know how they squeezed them all inside the church."
The Earl of Kilbourne! Again the name sounded like that of a stranger. But he was not a stranger. And the meaning of what the woman had just said struck home. He was getting married? Now? Inside that church? The Earl of Kilbourne was getting married?
"The bride just arrived," the second woman added, having thawed to the idea of having a stranger for an audience. "You missed her, more's the pity. All in white satin, she is, with a scalloped train and a bonnet and netting that covers her face. But if you stand here a spell, you will see them coming out as soon as the church bells start to ring. The carriage will come around this way before going back around and through the gates, I daresay, so that we can all wave and get a good look at them. Leastways that is what Mr. Wesley says—the innkeeper, you know."
But Lily did not wait for further explanations. She was hurrying across the green, threading her way among the people standing there. She was half running by the time she reached the church gateway.
***
Neville could tell by the flurry of movement at the back of the church that Lauren had arrived with Baron Galton, her grandfather. There was a stirring of heightened expectation from the pews, which held all the flower of the ton as well as a number of the more prominent local families. Several heads turned to look back, though there was nothing to see yet.
Nevi
lle felt as if someone had tightened his cravat at the neck and dropped a handful of frisky butterflies into his stomach, both of which afflictions had been with him to varying degrees since before the early breakfast he had been unable to consume, but he turned eagerly enough for his first sight of his bride. He caught a glimpse of Gwen, who was stooping apparently to straighten the train of Lauren's gown. The bride herself stood tantalizingly just out of sight.
The vicar, splendidly robed for the occasion, stood just behind Neville's shoulder. Joseph Fawcitt, Marquess of Attingsborough, the male cousin closest to him in age and always a close friend, cleared his throat from his other side. Every head, Neville was aware, had turned now to look toward the back entrance in expectation of the appearance of the bride. Of what importance was a mere bridegroom, after all, when the bride was about to appear? Lauren was exactly on time, he guessed with a private half smile. It would be unlike her to be late by even a single minute.
He shifted his feet as the movements at the back of the church became more pronounced and there was even the sound of voices inappropriately loud for the interior of a church. Someone was telling someone else with sharp urgency that he or she could not go in there.
And then she stepped through the doorway into the view of those gathered inside the church. Except that she was alone. And not dressed as a bride but as beggar woman. And she was not Lauren. She took a few hurried steps forward along the nave before stopping.
It was a hallucination brought on by the occasion, some remote part of his mind told Neville. She looked startlingly, achingly familiar. But she was not Lauren. His vision darkened about the edges and sharpened down the center. He looked along the nave of the church as down a long tunnel—or as through the eyepiece of a telescope—at the illusion standing there. His mind refused to function normally.
Someone—two men actually, he observed almost dispassionately—grabbed her arms and would have dragged her back out of sight. But the sudden terror that she would disappear, never to be seen again, released him from the paralysis that had held him in its grip. He held up one staying arm. He did not hear himself speak, but everyone turned sharply to look at him and he was aware of the echo of someone's voice saying something.
